


Murky Corners of Old Cities

by PaperRevolution, yet_intrepid



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/M, Gen, Historical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Historical dystopia. Paris, 1832. Les Amis de l’Abaissé, like all political dissenters, daily run the risk of execution under a monarchy which has become more absolutist than ever. Meanwhile, the three Jondrette girls and their neighbor Marius live in a neighborhood rank with cholera, and rumors are spreading that the government may have a hand in the spread of the disease. In the corners of the city, unrest grows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Murky Corners of Old Cities

The three girls slept all under the same blanket, a thin scrap riddled with holes.

By all accounts, they were the three Jondrette girls. But in fact, they were not sisters, and the eldest, while no more a Jondrette than the other two, was no Thenardier, either.

This wisp of a girl had only one name: Cosette. And while beside her, Éponine and Azelma shared their misery – crowded themselves into its heat; huddled close together as though by a dying fire – Cosette bore hers alone.

She lay on her back in the dark. Her eyes were open but may as well have been closed; the ceiling was lost in blackness. Éponine had long since tugged the frayed edge of the blanket away from Cosette and so now she had nothing to cover her. She was cold. Cold, and hungry, too – she had had nothing but a little bit of bread, so hard that she had to hold it in her mouth for several minutes before she could hope to chew and swallow it, since the previous morning. And with the cold nipping at her from without and the hunger gnawing at her from within, she could not sleep.

Cosette thought of her mother. She had never known her, or at least, did not remember her. Sometimes, she fancied she had a vague recollection of a woman in a pale coloured dress, picking her up and kissing her with weary tenderness on her forehead. She had to believe that her mother had loved her – it was the only proof she had, she thought to herself bitterly, that she could be loved at all. It served her well enough, this desperate belief in a woman whose face she could not recall and would never see again; Cosette mourned her mother, and so her bitterness was of a sadder, sweeter sort than that of the other Jondrette girls. When Cosette thought of Fantine, she was wistful and almost reverent. She could know, then, that there was kindness in the world, and could hope that perhaps one day she might again be in reach of it. Clinging to this idea, Cosette waited.

All sorts was said about Cosette's mother. Éponine had speculated, once, that Fantine had been a dissenter. She had shut her mouth abruptly when Babet had reminded her of the penalties for harbouring a dissenter's child – they would all be taken to the river to be drowned, were this ever found to be true. And why, in any case, would Monsieur and Madame Thenardier agree to harbour such a person?

Éponine had said confidentially to Azelma that if there was money in it, their father would agree to most anything.

There was no more talk, after that, of Fantine being a dissenter. But Cosette wondered. What if she had been? What if she had been someone who was unafraid to speak the truth of what she believed? Were this true, would Cosette be proud of her, or would she begin to hate the dissenters for taking her mother from her?

Cosette imagined her mother, struggling against heavy chains that chafed and bit at her skin; imagined panic rising like bile in her throat. She closed her eyes and saw – almost felt – the collective thrashing of prisoners. The futility of their struggle. And then...and then the water, cold and inevitable, closing over their heads. The pressure building, building in her lungs; the burn of it in her eyes and nose and mouth - 

Her eyes snapped open. She would not think of that. No, not tonight.

Another time, Monsieur Thenardier had called Cosette's mother “that whore”. It had been a throwaway comment, and Cosette had shrank from it. This was in her eyes a worse thing, a far worse thing, than being called a dissenter. And it brought to Cosette's mind a new question, one that had somehow evaded her before: who was her father? Who was he, and where was he now? Was he still alive?

Useless questions, and yet she tormented herself with them, still. She could not conjure even the most vague image of her father – he might as well have never existed at all.

Outside, there came the sound of muffled voices in the street. Cosette closed her eyes. She pressed her cold hand to her cheek and tried to imagine that the hand belonged instead to her mother.

-_-_-_-

Éponine Thenardier thought that she had been born into the wrong life.

Often, this thought would cross her mind. She would imagine herself attired in fine silks and velvets. She would imagine – or try to imagine, for how could she really picture such things? - adoring young men whirling her about in one exhilarating dance after another. Oh, but if only a rich man would fall in love with her! She would lavish affection on him; she would never let him forget that he had been the one to save her.

But there was, it seemed, only a small corner of the city reserved for those select few who could eat good food and drink fine wine; walk in meadows and ride in carriages, and look at the sun. The rest could crawl in the dirt, mindless and powerless and voiceless. Chartists, drown. Buonapartists, to the river and drown. Orleanists and Republicans, writhe and thrash in chains; gasp like slick fish on a deck, and drown. All, all of them, die. And the poor, too; they could grovel in the dirt and die.

From the bare grey squalor of their room in the Gorbeau tenement, Éponine, Azelma and Cosette now set forth, launching themselves into this city of churning, careless bodies. It was morning. Éponine and Azelma carried letters, carefully penned by their father, which they were to deliver to recipients who had been deemed both wealthy and charitable. Cosette, who was not to be trusted, carried nothing. If Éponine and Azelma's task was to beg, then hers was to steal and to scrounge.

They separated. Azelma and Cosette went one way; Éponine another. It was a bright day, and the air was close and humid. Éponine hummed to herself – little, throaty snatches of half-remembered songs – as she crossed the street. She made an attempt to be a frivolous little slip of a thing, singing her songs in the daylight. The attempt fell flat; she cut a pitiful figure.

She left the Rue Saint Jacques. She was moving along the boulevard when a cry went up – a woman's tremulous voice, calling “Listen!”

A second voice took up the cry, this one exultant. “Listen! Listen!”

Obediently, and more than a little startled, Éponine – who had been thinking of her tall, finely dressed saviour – raised her head and listened.

What she heard, at first, was only the sound of footsteps. Many, many footsteps, moving slowly and all at once in the same direction. It was a drumbeat. And, too, there were real drums. They sounded with a sort of precise exuberance, growing louder.

Then there appeared, it almost seemed from nowhere, the first of them. Dissenters. Traitors to the king. Chartists, drown. Buonapartists, to the river and drown. Orleanists and Republicans, writhe and thrash in chains; gasp like slick fish on a deck, and drown. All, all, drown!

They were all, every last one of them, in chains. Not only their hands were manacled, but their ankles, too, so that they could manage only a painstakingly slow and shuffling gait. They were forced to march with their shoulders back and their heads held erect. If any chanced to look down, one of the men tasked with leading them would strike him, forcefully.

Éponine looked at the filthy, shuffling creatures. They evoked in her a sort of furious, acrid pity – look; a misery far worse than even she could imagine! Look at these people, marched through the streets towards their imminent deaths. If Éponine herself was tiny and insignificant, then at least she was not like these people, paraded before the masses; made into a terrible example.

A woman near the edge of the crowd stumbled. Wrists bound, she could not right herself, and went to her knees. Éponine watched her fall; watched the way her mouth stretched itself into a plea. A man struck at her head. “Onward!” he bellowed, and the other prisoners surged forward, trampling her into the dirt. Amongst the onlookers there went up a wordless cry that might have been rage or excitement. No one moved from where they stood. To show support for these piteous, manacled creatures would be to resign oneself to the same fate.

The drumbeat began again, accompanied, this time, with cries of “Long live the king! Long live the king!”

While their cries receded, Éponine stood without moving. She looked at the prone body of the fallen woman, broken and chained, trampled to a pulp by her fellows. Long live the king. Éponine hoped, with silent, vitriolic fervour, that some awful fate would befall him. Long may he die, she thought, down with the king. Let him burn to a crisp or choke on his own blood or be torn apart by ravening dogs. Let him be blown apart by cannons. Let him be drowned in the Seine, like the dissenters themselves; let all the little fish nibble at his bloated body until there was nothing left of it but slick yellow bone.

And outwardly, she cried along with the others: “Long live the king!”

-_-_-_-

Marius Pontmercy, awakening from a restless sleep, heard a knock at his door. Whether it was this that had woken him, or something else, he did not know. Blinking several times in quick succession, he stood – he had fallen asleep fully clothed – and called out in a broken, sleep-ridged voice: “Come in.”

The door opened inwards. Framed in a watery dawn light, there stood two ragged apparitions. The taller of the two stepped forward, proffering a letter.

“Monsieur Marius,” she said, in an old woman's guttural croak. Marius scarcely heard her. He was looking past her at the second, smaller girl, who hovered uncertainly beyond the doorway. He had never seen the like of her.

She was – oh, she was frail! Her arms and legs were like thin, pale shafts of light. One white shoulder was bare, and there was a smudge of dirt there. Her face was heart-shaped; it was the open, plaintive face of a child. The cheeks were hollow; the eyes sunken and lips chapped. She had a small mouth and large eyes, a curious dark shade of blue. Those eyes compelled him. Her hair was worn loose, a deep chestnut shot through with gold. It hung about her, thick and knotted, and he thought she looked like a creature from some old tale of magic, and of mystery. She was not beautiful (how could she be?) but there was a raw brilliance in her, Marius thought.

Then the first girl broke into his thoughts, saying again, more insistently: “Monsieur Marius! Beg your pardon, but my father asked that we bring you this letter.”

Marius started. Belatedly, he took the letter from the girl. Whilst he read it, she wandered further into the room and her sister – for Marius supposed she must be – crossed the threshold in a quick, cautious movement. A flutter, he thought; that was right. A little, birdlike flit.

Having perused the letter, Marius looked up. The smaller girl, now very still, was watching him.

The other, by contrast, was not a moment still. She moved about Marius' room almost absently, with the air of someone who had spent much time there. She picked up his books; plucked at a coat draped over a chair. Marius paid her no mind. He was still, it will be remembered, blinking from his eyes the last traces of sleep. He could not be relied upon to think clearly at this hour, and his attention was divided, presently, between the letter and the girl in the doorway.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, offering her a smile, “You can come in, you know.”

The girl bowed her head. A small hand came up to pluck at the neck of her chemise. There seemed to be a moment of hesitation, stretched taut. Then she moved forward into the room. She was paler still in the brighter light; a sickly, attenuated thing, but the sun caught the gold in her hair and picked out flecks of green in her eyes, and Marius caught his breath.

Somewhere behind Marius, the other girl announced:

“I can read, I can.”

And so saying, she picked up one of Marius' books and with a proud and pointed inflection, began to read. Politely, Marius turned to look at her, but she might have been making up words as she went along, for all that he was really listening.

When she had finished, he turned to the smaller girl and asked: “Do you like to read, too?” Though he could not imagine, truthfully, where on earth she could manage to lay her hands on a book. A moment later, he realised his blunder, for the girl, ducking her head, said in a voice so soft that he had to step closer to hear her:

“I... I cannot read, Monsieur. I did not have the opportunities – I mean, I was not so lucky as to...” she shook her head, as though hoping this might nudge her thoughts into place. Marius felt heat rush to his face.

“You have very pretty hair, Mademoiselle,” he blurted, clutching, for want of anything more substantial to say, at the very first thing he could think of. He scarcely realised what it was he had said, until he had already said it, and his colour deepened further.

The girl did not seem to know what to say. Her eyes grew very wide, and she shook her head. Mercifully, the other, whom Marius thought to be her sister, interjected:

“Aren't you awfully lonely, living here by yourself?”

Marius shook his head.

“Perhaps you're afraid that if you spend too much time among other people, your face will turn purple and you'll drop down dead?” she gave a hoarse laugh. Then, seeming to remember herself, she added: “Pardon, Monsieur. You haven't known anyone who's died like that, have you?”

Marius took 'like that' to mean 'from the cholera'. A chill feeling rolled in the pit of his stomach. He was afraid.

“No, no,” he said to her, suddenly grave. Was she afraid, herself, he wondered? Perhaps her brazenness masked a deep fear. More and more succumbed by the day, and the poor in particular were vulnerable. 

“I have,” she rushed on, “I know a man – knew him, rather. Only a boy, really. Not much older than me, you know. He used to tell me stories, once – silly little things, you know. Once, we were running away from the police, and he grabbed my hand. Nobody else ever took my hand like that, except my sister. Do you know, I saw him when he was dead, Monsieur Marius. His eyes were shut, but he didn't look peaceful – no, he didn't. He looked awful. You should be scared, Monsieur.”

He looked at her properly, then. She stood surprisingly straight with her shoulders clenched and a ferocious look on her face, all contorted in a furious agony of futile anger and terror. Marius turned away.

“Here,” he brushed by her to retrieve from amongst his belongings the things he needed. He heaped at her money, and bread, and a jug, half finished and warm, of wine. “Share it between you. And give the money to your father with my regards.” He looked past her at the girl by the doorway. “What-” he caught himself, thinking it prudent to address the both of them, “I do not believe you told me your names. You know mine, but I do not know yours.”

“Éponine,” replied the girl nearest to him, and she dipped him a clumsy parody of a curtsy. Then, jerking her head in the vague direction of the door, “That's Cosette.”

Marius murmured the name half to himself, committing it to memory. “Cosette.” The girl named Éponine gave a contemptuous sniff.

“Come on!” she ordered Cosette, going to her and tugging roughly at her arm, “Let's leave Monsieur Marius, now. He does not want us – no, he does not.” Half-dragging Cosette from the room she called back over her shoulder, “Thank you, Monsieur! You are very kind!”

Marius watched them disappear, his forehead knitting into a frown. If the pity he felt for Éponine was a dull ache, that which he felt for Cosette was a much sharper pain. So swept up on it was he that he did not think of the imbalance of this; the unfairness. He only tried to pick out which of the retreating footsteps were hers, and thought desperately of all the small ways in which he might begin to help her. Marius was a man changed. He had been given a purpose, and it fluttered like a live thing in his chest. Marius loved.


End file.
